Marie-Thérèse Inguenaud - Böcker

The first two volumes of the Correspondance générale d'Helvétius inspired international acclaim. Now the third volume offers us further insight into a variety of aspects of life in eighteenth-century France.Claude-Adrian Helvétius (1715-71) was a wealthy and high-ranking member of French society. He was acquainted with the leading political and social figures of his time and, through family, with the court and government which he occasionally served in a diplomatic capacity. Philosopher, encyclopedist, and author of the explosive De l'Esprit, he and his wife, Anne Catherine de Ligneville, corresponded with the great and influential throughout Europe.The letters in this volume were written between 1761 and 1774, a period in which Helvétius enjoyed the fruits of his fame, travelled to England (1764) and Prussia (1765), and produced two books, Le Bonheur and De l'homme, which were published after his death.

This is the fourth of five volumes of the letters of the French philosopher Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715-1771), author of the controversial De l'Esprit (1758). Featuring the correspondence of Mme Helvétius, née Anne Catherine de Ligniville (1722-1800), in the years following her husband's death, this volume also includes letters by and to Helvétius discovered since the publication of the first three volumes.Mme Helvétius enjoyed an active widowhood, welcoming to her salon in Auteuil a group of intellectuals who came to be known as the Idéologues. A close friend of Benjamin Franklin, she was involved in political events before and during the French Revolution, as well as in Napoleon's coup d'état. In the last letter of the series her grandson describes her burial in her garden, which took place without religious or revolutionary ceremony in the presence of all her favourite pets.Most of the newly discovered letters are addressed to Helvétius by figures as important as d'Alembert, Boulanger, Chastellux, Saint-Lambert, Servan, Thieriot, and Trublet. Some of these complete an existing exchange, others provide dates for letters already published.The fifth and final volume will be devoted primarily to a comprehensive index. It will also include a chronological list of all the letters, corrections and modifications, and other useful material.